- Sara Moinian
Untitled
By: Nicole Wasylak
Might there be a symphony in the tree?
A concert in the forest, where a conductor bears more legs than two?
I’ve heard it every night
A loud musical, echoing beyond the tenebrous trees
First, begins the crickets with their tambourines
Clashing
Once, twice, three times
Swelling with the heartbeat of the earth
Which refuses to finish when the sun awakens
And then, the drumbeat of the bullfrog
Slow
Slow
Slow
A cadence so low even all who are sleeping
wink an eye at their baritone call
And what would a concert be, of course
without the haunting melody of the loon, the cries of
A lover in their blues, a synchronistic call that
swells with the music of every other creature that
comes to life while we slumber
Little lanterns, oh how I see you glow
Something quiet, crooked, but moved
You float with an air no wing-ed creature may obtain
Searching, searching, for what, I do not know
You are a question mark in the sky
Stoic as the mountains yet fluid as the sea
I want to ask you, how is that so?
How can something be as black as it is white?
Yet there you lay, cradled in the arms of the sky
Proof that paradoxes can be found
In even the most queer of places
Oh, lanterns, how I envy you so
How I wish I could learn from you
For you have watched over me and many more
But I know in my heart that one day
I will be beside you
Dripping like honey, so sweet, neither solid nor liquid
But drowsy
Like my eyes
Drowsy
Like your light
And through the woods we’d frolic —
Those old souls, you and I
I’ve seen these trees, the infant leaves
In the past, it’s been much time
And by my side you walked —
Along hemlock tangled paths
Those eyes, I suppose, I recognize
I’ve loved them from my past
And the forest, she tells
She’s whispered it for quite some time
I’ve listened here, not to think it queer
That you were always mine
